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Thursday, 19 July 2007

It’s
been 3 months since we wrote up the web page and in that time we’ve
covered, slowly, some 1200 odd miles and seen some of the varied
coastline of our own country for the first time. In the early days of
this trip, when libraries were more common, there seemed little point
in writing as the journey felt somehow tenuous, as though it wasn’t
real – possibly because everything was familiar

The
drama started as we left Quayside at 6am, casually reversing out of
the berth and into the river without checking we suddenly found
ourselves confronted with a tug towing a ship up to the scrap metal
yard and just made it across the river to avoid them before settling
down to the trip. The days that followed saw us exploring the local
anchorages, so familiar to everyone else in the yard and so foreign
to us, before seizing the easterly wind and heading on down to Poole.
Leaving the anchorage the next day and chancing our luck over a
narrow and shallow piece of channel under power, Bee who happened to
go below, shouted up that the engine temp. was very hot.
Unfortunately this coincided with us running aground and me trying to
reverse off. In fact I had just succeeded when she called and as her
next shout was to warn of smoke coming from said engine she had no
choice but to switch the engine off. So we promptly drifted back onto
the mud and lay beam on to the channel, effectively blocking it…..
Perhaps unwisely we opened the engine cover but eventually we
established the smoke was, in fact, steam but as we blocking the
channel used by a local ferry we contacted the HM and got ourselves
towed out of the way. In the end the problem turned out to be a
jubilee clip that had come adrift and shed the coolant. We repaired,
refilled and headed into the harbour for the night. A very swish,
varnished yacht lay near by and the owners came along to see us,
remarking in passing that the boat was Bloodhound, owned previously
by the Duke of E and we were welcome to look her over tomorrow.
However the visit didn’t materialise and we left heading the
following day for the West Country.

We arrived at Dartmouth around
2am in a blow, with no large scale chart, hearts thumping and crashed
through the narrow entrance and into comparative quiet. As it was
still dark and we were unable to locate any visitor’s buoys we tied
to a vacant MOD lump and slept for a few hours before heading
upstream. Eventually we settled on a buoy opposite a viaduct where,
over the next few days, we were entertained by the tourist steam
engine bellowing photogenic clouds of steam through the trees as it
made its twice daily journey.

From
there onto the Yealm, Fowey and then Helford to meet up with Nige and
Jude, fellow cruisers from our last trip. They live overlooking the
Helford in an idyllic spot and the first night we rowed ashore we
were greeted by a garden of wild primroses,bluebells,daffs and
wonderful smells.

Toots
came with us and spent the evening wandering around with a tail in
the air with happiness. A gathering of their friends and family
included us and the Sunday afternoon was taken with a boisterous game
of football from which two stars emerged – Bee as the top scorer
and Dyson, who at 70+ was a powerhouse of defending. Great afternoon.

We also met up with Brad and Jo, Isaac and Ruby from Lilly B. and
spent the evening chatting, drinking and catching
up. A last job was to help bring N&J’s boat down from Gweek and
onto their buoy opposite their house. The channel to and from Gweek
is tortuous and shallow even at high springs and had me wondering how
the place ever became so popular. Actually, like many of the “names”
we visited, it surprised us by being much larger than we’d thought
and, possibly because of that, we were under-awed by the whole place.

We’d
also snuck a quick trip into Falmouth and up the Fal which was
probably our favourite place. We stopped at the Marina at Falmouth
and decided to go looking for Steve and Marilyn, last seen in Nova
Scotia but every where we called had no knowledge of where they were
although they claimed the name to be familiar. Finally calling at a
swish yard and getting the same answer we were directed to a smaller,
cheaper yard across the river. As we pedalled through the propped up
boats we spotted Spray Venture and banged imperiously on the hull,
raising a startled Marilyn to peer over the side to see us grinning
and cavorting at having finally tracked them down.

Onto
the Scillies. Much has been said about the islands and everyone we
spoke to enthused about them but they did little for us and although
we stayed perhaps 10 days it felt as though we were filling in time.
We had such interesting trips between islands as fog descends within
minutes leaving you peering around listening for sounds that stir the
heart and emotions – surf, engines or the bell on a buoy…..
Curiously weeks later I was reading a sailing book written in the
1880’s and the author too felt they were over sold and hadn’t
lived up to the hype.

We
had a couple of longish journeys ahead: Scillies to Wales and Wales
to Scotland. Longish in that they offer few places to hole up and the
first one crosses the Bristol Channel. We opted for Milford Haven as
it had an easy entrance and wasn’t too far east. MH was a
revelation and once the industrial section had been left behind we
found ourselves meandering along a wonderful river, between woods,
rock, fields and sheep. True the tide runs hard but we had a number
of great anchorages and to ourselves. MH also offers free pontoons at
various points and we tied up to one a few miles in from the entrance
readying ourselves for the push north but there is little to
recommend this particular one as a swell works its way in and the
boat can roll heavily. The journey north took us through the islands
of Skomer and Skokholm where the tide rules and puffins abound and we
anchored in a small bay to await the return of the favourable tide
and then onto Fishguard for the night. The wind was light and
variable the next day as we headed off for N Wales. Plans changed and
changed again as the wind dropped, veered and the tide turned. A
decision to round Anglesey was aborted as we realised the tidal gates
would be all against us and we’d spend the next 3 days battling
seas and then Bee spotted a little bay called Port Dinllaen and less
than 15 miles from the southern entrance to the Menai Straits. Both
Reeds and Libby Purves (whose book
“One Summer’s Grace” we dip into for bits about the area we’re
in) write Dinllaen off as an anchorage for poor holding but the Rocna
we bought before we left has been everything we could have asked for.
Little we did we know the big test was about to arrive. Cruising
along into the last two miles before we turn Hannah was hit by a
gathering wind as the pleasant Force 4 escalated to a 7 in minutes
and that was protected by the adjacent headland. As we turned into
the bay and thus into the wind we dropped the main and crept in under
motor………….and crept………..and finally dropped the anchor.
40 metres plus of chain screamed out, the anchor bit and Hannah came
up head to wind happily and we rejoiced in our good fortune. It blew
hard that night but we remained in position and slept soundly. Well
that’s not quite true ‘cos ahead lay the southern entrance to the
Menai………and the wind was SW meaning we were heading into the
entrance on a lee shore. The channel shifts and the buoy positions
with it….was I nervous………too bleedin’ true I was. Should we
go in under sail or motor (I chose motor- mistake as we rolled badly)
and my nervousness was accelerated when I misread the buoy sequence
and headed inside instead of outside of the first mark. But half an
hour later we were in and in calmer water but the only two anchorages
looked distinctly iffy and we opted for the marina by Caernarfon
Castle. A fine choice as we were not only treated very well by the
Berthing Master Mark but he has reams of very useful info on the
entrance but also on the Menai Strait itself, the traversing of which
depends a careful timing. Luckily a couple of local boats were
heading to Conwy and offered to show us the way and the following day
we all left in convoy………except we nearly didn’t as I
completely misjudged the effect of the flood tide on the narrow
entrance to the harbour and found that despite full revs and a tiller
hard over it was quite obvious we were going to T-bone the wall on
the other side……….how strange that time stands still in
these moments as, engine now going hard astern, we waited to see if
we would avoid disaster – snapped bowsprit, boat pinned up against
a wall before being swept into a shallow area whilst the Monday
morning loafers looked on………. But we did back off, we did get
everything under a control and we did slide smoothly through the
entrance under a visibly nervous berthing master. The trip up was
uneventful after that until we cleared the two bridges the wind
picked up and we were faced with a series of mast shaking gybes as we
followed a snaking channel. By now all but one of our escorts had
left us and we followed him across his favourite shortcut…the
depths dropped and continued to drop and still our man ploughed on
his gaze glued to his chart plotter, following his boats progress on
the screen as we careered along behind him. He knew his stuff, knew
our depth and led us safely, if a little worriedly (on our behalf) to
the entrance of Conwy. The very smart marina had been primed for our
arrival by a friend who also happens to be a policeman and so we
closed the entrance and called them…. wind is gusting, entrance is
narrow, marina is FULL of expensive, white plastic and there isn’t
a lot of room to manoeuvre……..I chickened out and we headed
upstream and picked up a municipal buoy where we remained for a week
visiting Lindy and Mark and Lindy’s parents, David and Mary Ann
before heading north for Scotland via the Isle of Man.

Not much we
can say about the latter other than our departure from Port Erin
coincided with a growing wind that had us embayed and Hannah clawing
her way out under heavily reefed main and straining engine, burying
her bowsprit before aiming for the moon and all on board wondering
what on earth we were doing…

We
arrived at Loch Ryan after a frustrating trip, a theme that has been
common actually as the engine hours will confirm. Loch Ryan has
Stranraer at its head and we anchored for a few days before heading
in. The Harbour Master turned out to be from Yorkshire and moved
boats around to accommodate
us. The harbour is being dredged to put in a pontoon for visiting
yachts so we had to time our arrival and wait until the dredger had
headed off to sea before entering. We stayed a few days as I wanted
to head off to say final goodbyes to a friend who had died and say a
quick hello to Pete, Sarah and Evan plus various other people I
hadn’t seen for almost 30 years.

That
was about a month ago and since then we have wandered around the west
coast of Scotland, found somewhere to winter (Campbeltown on Kintyre)
had a quick cruise around Arran and up the Kyle’s of Bute before
heading around the Mull of Kintyre on up to Gigha.

From
there an exhilarating sail up the Sound of Islay, between Islay and
Jura, where our speeds under a reefed mizzen, stays’l and spitfire
reached an exhilarating 9+knots thanks to 6 knots of tide. Progress
was going well but a glance of our shoulder saw a rapidly moving
cloud and as we approached the entrance to Loch Tarbert, on Jura we
were hit by the squall which used the adjacent mountain to accelerate
and hit us at a good 50 knots. Hannah heeled and kept on heeling as
the bulwarks and then the bottom edge of the toe boards went under
water until we clawed the mizzen down to bring some order to the
boat. Made it into a bit of shelter and tested the Rocna again. Once
the wind eased we worked our way up the Loch and into a pool of brown
peaty water, surrounded by rocks for the night. Spent a few nights in
the Loch but moved into the inner part after the second night for
complete isolation – no houses no roads. We came back through the
Islay sound and worked our way, over the next few days up past but
not through the Gulf of Corryvrecken but through the Cuan Sound and
onto Oban before heading up to Tobermory and onto The Small Isles.

Canna
was our choice for a few nights, chatting to other cruisers who all
seem to be from the Solent for some reason before heading up to Loch
Harport on Skye. Quiet anchorage to ourselves really, although we
were visited by a lovely Dutch gaff ketch some 80 feet long. Not sure
what it is about skippers on these small ships but they rarely appear
friendly or even able to acknowledge your presence although that
wasn’t true of the crew. Ho hum. We decided to leave Gesto Bay on a
sunny Monday morning and within seconds of Bee starting to haul the
anchor she realised we had a problem as an anchor could be clearly
seen dangling from our chain some 2 metres under the boat (we were
anchored in 5 or 6 metres so we knew it wasn’t ours) There followed
2 hours of hard work as we laboured to raise a discarded mooring
anchor complete with riser and bridle. We had lines attached to
anchor, lines attached to chain and to our joy the shackles came
undone with little effort. Finally with the unwanted anchor hanging,
but secure, we set off to accost a local fishing boat across the
Loch. “Would they like it otherwise we would dump it” Alarmed at
the thought we may do so on their fishing ground they gently came
alongside and removed the item and any other bits we no longer
needed. We had intended to take it out to sea but I guess wherever we
dumped it may have fouled someone’s fishing ground so it is
probably ashore in a twee garden somewhere.

Whilst
in Canna we were told by several boats about their experiences in the
Western Isles or Outer Hebrides. It was generally negative, too
bleak, too many rocks etc. We obviously decided to go although the
only charts we have are small scale and no use whatsoever in
negotiating Loch entrances strewn

with
rocks. But the Pilot Books are and whilst they often lack lat and
long it is possible, with care, to work your way into these places.
And what places they are. So far we have only been here about a week
but we are bowled over. Firstly it reminds us of Newfie but without
the prospect of 8’ of ice in the winter and secondly we have the
anchorages to ourselves. Not even a mooring buoy to encourage
visitors and we love it. At the moment we’re in a small creek in
Loch Stockinish on Harris. The entrance has a few rocks to dodge but
absolutely nothing to worry about but the Loch opens up after you
slide through a 27 metre gap. A few more houses around the Loch than
the last few but already we keep looking at small crofts and musing……

But
we have moved on again and are now in Stornoway and, like so many
before us, bemused by the huge contrast with the rest of the Western
Isles. Perhaps we should have realised that the appearance of an
occasional street lamp in a sparsely populated hamlet meant we may
soon come across more…but this place is a real town with every
amenity you could wish for. That’s not meant to be derogatory
either but it really bears no resemblance to the rest of the places
we’ve visited. Has a great feel to the place, very friendly people
who take delight in telling us the Hebridean Celtic Festival starts
next week along with the Traditional Boat Gathering and assume we’ve
arrived early for the latter………..although, true to form, we
will have left before either starts.

I’ve
already written about our anchor and can only reiterate it has been a
brilliant investment and has never let us down yet irrespective of
the bottom. It digs through weed and finds the mud below and even
came up once with a small boulder lodged between its flukes.

Whenever
we have needed to reef the main I find myself gazing up at the sail,
noting how well it sets and draws and say each time how glad I am we
got a professional sail-maker to supply them. They have been a joy to
work with and the deeper reefs and the spitfire jib give enormous
satisfaction both in raising and it the way they work so well
together.

And
finally… Bee is rowing ashore with Toots hanging over the bow
dangling a front paw millimetres from the water. I’m on the shore
and, as Bee is going off course, I call out for her to pull hard on
her left oar….she does…and Toots finds the boat is no longer
underneath her but the water is and she is deposited unceremoniously
into very cold water……….from where resurfacing at high speed
and without assistance she appears to propel herself from the depths
back onto the dinghy……

Saturday, 3 February 2007

And
finally the update is done which can only mean we’re back in the
cruising mode and about to head off. Or have already done so…

It has been a long 18 months, lots of work on Hannah, lots of paid work
for Bee, less for me, but sat over the inevitable evening glass of
wine (now home brewed) there is a feeling of satisfaction at the
changes we have made - improvements all. Engine and gearbox sorted,
doghouse built, new sails with the addition of a trys’l and small
storm stays’l (NOT that we will ever need them….)
and so on. Here’s a brief rundown on the efforts to date.

We
came out of the water on Dec 4th 2005 and built a “Maine
shelter” to protect us from the, forecasted, harsh winter. The
building process was accompanied by much lip pursing and head shaking
but in the end the shelter impressed all with its rigidity. Mind you
they hadn’t seen the house our friend John built to house their
boat in sunny Maine…………

One
of its great assets was it enabled us to get on with work as it
tended to hide us from passers by and although work progressed slowly
we were moving forward. Of the many jobs we had to tackle the
repairing of various bits of hull damage was fairly prominent. Long
time readers will, perhaps, remember the stories of hitting lumps of
French granite and being assaulted by a runaway iceberg. The latter
was relatively easy as the damage was confined to the epoxy that had
been used to fair the hull.

The granite damage proved a different
problem as the cement we had used had set so hard it refused to crack
with a lump hammer and bolster and eventually we gave up and decided
it was sound enough. We ground it back to give a smoother finish and
declared ourselves satisfied. The wonder of concrete hulls…. And
the wonder of the use of the shower on Larus (Tim and Nancy’s boat)
to rid ourselves of the inevitable cement dust that accompanies the
grinding back of the hull.

Their purchase of a flat couldn’t have
come at a more timely moment either and they may never fully
understand our appreciation.... Other tasks we came across were rot
in the bridge-deck and the bottom of the mizzen and touches of rot in
the main. All repaired with varying degrees of difficulty. “Stan”
became the focus of our attention as we bombarded Paul with numerous
changes we felt we needed – almost entirely to stiffen up and make
it more storm proof. The
re-launch day came and went without us and we settled for a more
expensive sole launching later in the year. We contacted a supplier
for Jotun paints, checked the colour on the internet and were
suitably horrified when we opened the tins to confirm…going back to
the internet we noticed a small notice which indicated that colours
shown on screens, because of the limitations of computers, bear
little resemblance to reality.

Well
ok it wasn’t quite like that but certainly the gist. Reactions
varied from “the contents of a babies nappy” to a “great colour
to be seen at sea” with us firmly in the latter camp. By May, with
the sun high, we needed to remove the cover as temperatures would
easily rise to 30ْC
and above and even the tomato plants Bee had elected to grow seemed
to wilt under the heat.

We
completed the paint and bright work, cleaned up the engine, replaced,
with Geoff’s help, the timing belt and re-fitted the engine. By
late July we were back in the water and towed back to our berth.
Engine was re-connected, prop shaft and a new flexible stern gland
fitted and with new wiring we fired it up and did it run well. All
that thanks to John of course.

Smaller
jobs were completed and then we got a surprise visit from Martin and
Roma (the previous owners and builders of Hannah)in “Apple” a steel Wylo, their latest build (and last they
assure us) Lots of neat ideas and high workmanship and great to see
both boats together. Still prefer Hannah though. Actually
we have had several visits whilst here. Ziggy and Lisa and then
Stephen and Zella both visited, at different times, from the US and
then my grandson Evan arrived towing his parents, Pete and Sarah,
along to see the reprobates in the flesh. Quite a year!

By
now we were almost, we thought, ready and then idly glancing through
an oldish copy of Yachting Monthly I happened to see a photo of a
similar boat to Hannah that had built a doghouse…………………
YES just what we needed!!!…….much discussion with many different
people, a pooling of ideas and then the break we needed when Alastair
casually mentioned he’d love to give me a hand in the build.
Alastair, besides featuring in a number of previous webpage’s of
ours is also a dab hand with wood and his offer meant the difference
between “Gawd what on
earth is that” and ”It
looks like it has always been there”

We
measured, cogitated, re-measured and then ordered. I collected from
the wood yard but was absolutely gob smacked at the size of the
timbers and had a nervous chat with my mentor about the sizes –
surely Noah couldn’t have had anything like these sizes?

But we
worked on steadily, me looking on, AD whittling away and slowly it
came into being and, I have to say, is everything we could have
wished for. The timbers are in keeping with the massive strength of
Hannah and already we appreciate the difference as ventilation
improves dramatically, the blessed Toots has somewhere to shelter and
rain no longer means we have the hatch slammed shut.

The
sails! Well this was a saga that could have been from hell. We’d
bought the material, found and bought an industrial sewing machine and a copy of
“The Sailmaker’s Apprentice” A local hall was available for
hire (£6.00 ph) and a mental (you choose which way it’s meant..)
calculation of 200 hours to cut and stitch seemed about right. The
weeks turned into months and Bee’s reminder that we (I) hadn’t
started was met with excuses. Finally we sat down to work out a
strategy which quickly established that perhaps we should give
ourselves a head start and get the main made. I phoned around to find
a sail maker who would use our material. All I spoke to said “No”
but many mentioned the name “James Lawrence” and so I rang.
“Sure, No problem” After a couple of discussions with Mark Butler
at JL we felt that perhaps we should just hand the whole job over and
so drove over to Essex with our old sails. Watching the loft in
action made us realise that we had been out of our depth here and the
relief at handing the job over was palpable and enormous. Made more
so when we told the sails we had asked for, 9 in total, would take 3
skilled people 3 – 4 weeks to complete…perhaps I needed to add a
0 to my calculation of 200 hours? Readers of earlier entries may
remember our uncanny ability to find heavy weather whenever we’re
“doing a long one”. It’s this ability that we focused on when
we were discussing the sails with Mark and the reason we now have
deeper reefs in both the main and mizzen and a trys’l and storm
stays’l for those moments when the call of the sea is replaced with
the call of the 9-5…………. As yet we have had little chance to
try them out other than for a few hours but we’ll report in due
course.

Another
change has been the saloon stove. Battered and worn, the old one had
given great service but we’d set our heart on something with a
little more control, something that would burn through the night if
required and chose to fit a Morso Squirrel. It is a cracking stove,
fulfils all our needs and with its glass front gives a wonderful
glow. We toyed with the idea of a back burner and radiators but then
found we’d need to install a pump and then we’d be into
additional power requirements. (apparently the pump used by Reflex uses about 2
amps!). KISS....

A
tale or two…. I’m in the engine compartment, clarting around and
Bee is putting the kettle on. As you are possibly aware we have a
Taylor’s Paraffin Cooker which is preheated before igniting. Bee
was in this preheat process and turned to the fuel tank to pump up
the pressure, turned back and was confronted by a small wall of
flame. “I think you should come here” sayeth the dulcet toned
one……….:”I think you should come here NOW” It was the
slight emphasis on the last word that alerted me to the fact that
something might be amiss………. We dumped a fire blanket over the
flames, blasted it with an extinguisher and retreated up top. Gazing
at the white fire blanket I could see a cherry glow and a gentle
roaring sound and rushed down the companionway. Peeking under the
blanket, holding my breath against the fumes I can see the fire is
definitely not out. In one of those strange coincidences in life Bee
had come back from Asda the night before and announced that the shop
had fire extinguishers and, as ours were mostly out of date, perhaps
we should get a new one. Oddly enough instead of prevaricating as I
usually do we had gone in that morning and bought one. And, of
course, it was this brand new extinguisher I’d grabbed and squirted
over the blanket. This time I lifted the blanket and emptied the
remains of the contents across the cooker…………. Well they do
make a mess but more importantly they work very well. Obviously
we needed to replace that and buy more but timing is all it seems.
The fault by the way can be traced to the eejit I employ to keep the
cooker in fine fettle i.e. ME. I had allowed a locking nut to work
loose (or more likely not done it up tight enough) which had allowed
a fuel leakage and then the fire. Paraffin is a MUCH safer fuel than
gas and has in no way altered our view of the cooker. Other than to
make sure all necessary work is done properly and in good time. And
then one day passing the rubbish bin, as usual full to overflowing, I
spotted a wine box lying on top of the rest of discarded items. Ever
curious I shook it and was rewarded with a carton at least half
full….as a matter of academic interest I checked the sell by date
and startled to see it was only the day previous. Of course we drank
it – kept us going for several days.

We
had a week away, ostensibly as a shakedown and or departure. Motored
across to Newtown Creek and then endured a week of howling gales as
low after low came scudding down the English Channel. At one time we
suffered a whiteout as wave tops were blown clean off and when the
wind backed to the SW we had a fine time…………. Except that it
reminded us rather more than we wanted of the journey back from
Greenland…………………

With
the many nights we have spent at anchor over a variety of seabed’s
you will appreciate how dear to our hearts a good anchor is. We’d
used a 45lb CQR and a 56lb imitation CQR and whilst the heavier one
was much better we were aware that in very strong blows, despite a
long scope and a religious fervour when setting the damn thing,
Hannah had a tendency to creep. By creep I mean that the wind and
wave strength would combine to gradually move her across an
anchorage, despite being, apparently, well dug in. It might only be
60 feet or less but it happened. It may be the effect of tide or wind
changes but it happened. Where the anchorage is wide and loads of sea
room it isn’t a problem but it is something else we have to concern
ourselves with. Over the years we had become almost fanatical about
our anchoring technique and would set and reset if we had doubts
about the holding. Better to do it then than face a gale and a
dragging hook. Then we read about an anchor that seemed too good to
be true. Sets first time (another bone….) and just keeps digging
in. Intrigued we contacted the Kiwi company and did some more
research and then decided to buy.

This time we have gone larger still
(33kg or 73lbs) and the short trial we had in Newtown has so far
confirmed we made a good choice. It set first time on the 3 occasions
we dropped it and set it that wonderful, heart warming way that
forces the boat to swing immediately toward the anchor, irrespective
of the way she is falling off. Yes, I know Newtown is a good holding
and that the anchor is heavier than those we have used before but
with our experience to set as the ROCNA did and for Hannah to sit
without any creep, on a short scope, when the wind strength was so
high is unprecedented. We look forward to trying it out on a variety
of beds. Watch this space.